Premium Bonds: record £35m in prizes goes unclaimed

A record amount of Premium Bond winnings is going unclaimed, it has emerged.

Prize winners have failed to claim a total of £35m, according to National Savings & Investments. This is an increase from £33m in February and the highest ever level. The number of unclaimed prizes, 599,000, is also a record.

Premium Bonds: record £35m in prizes goes unclaimed

There is no time limit for claiming Premium Bond prizes. The oldest unclaimed prize – of £25 – dates back to November 1957.

The biggest unclaimed prize is £100,000. The owner of the winning bond is a woman whose last known address was in "outer London", NS&I said. She now owns just £25 worth of the bonds. Two other investors, a man from Essex and another from inner London, have failed to claim £25,000 prizes, while 10 holders are unaware that they have won £10,000 each.

"The unclaimed prizes range all the way up to £100,000 from £25," said NS&I, which gives away over 1m tax-free Premium Bond prizes each month. I added that about 99.9pc of prizes were reunited with their owners within two years.

If you want to check whether you have won any of the unclaimed prizes, you can check by visiting NS&I's website (nsandi.com) and entering your Premium Bond holder's number into the prize-checker search facility on the home page.

NS&I said: "The prize checker has proven extremely popular, with an average of some 555,000 visitors each month or over 18,000 visitors a day." The service has traced money for people living as far afield as Australia, Thailand, Canada and Italy, it added.

Holders can also check for unclaimed prizes by writing to Premium Bonds, National Savings & Investments, Blackpool FY3 9YP.

If you don't know your holder's number, it is still possible to find out if you are due any unclaimed winnings, although the process is more complicated. The website mylostaccount.org.ukhelps you trace forgotten money that may be lying dormant in accounts at banks, building societies and at NS&I.

The website will ask you a number of questions, such as the name of the institutions where you think you may have held accounts, the account type, the branch you used and your address at the time.

If a bank, building society or NS&I thinks they have found an account that you are looking for, they will need you to provide documents, such as a passport, driving licence or birth certificate, to show that the account is rightfully yours.